Blarney House lies about 500m from the famous Castle, but I bet many of the tourists that come to visit the castle never go over to visit it, or walk around the grounds.

I took this from the Coachford Greenway, shooting through the ditch instead of over it, which is why you’ll see the frame of dark leaves and grass. The sky was flat grey and heavy. A few minutes later it started raining, but I had an umbrella, and I had a couple of nice photos. Worth…

The feeder at Carbery Cottage Guest Lodge on the Sheep’s Head is inside a rusted steel cage, so I couldn’t get a single photo without bars in it. It also stops crows and larger birds getting at the food! The great tits were juveniles, still yellow in the cheek and a bit ragged about the…

The cardoons in Blarney Castle Gardens have been left to flower, which is what you do if you want bees rather than dinner. This one was about the size of my fist, and the bumblebee had worked its way into the lower edge of it, half buried in the purple. I shot it zoomed in,…

Shot from below, the memorial’s three bronze wings blot out most of the sky. A man in a grey hoodie sat on the granite wall at the base, hunched over something in his lap, tiny against the thing behind him. He’d picked the one spot where the monument stops being a monument and turns into…

The fireworks went up from a barge moored out in Cobh harbour, and the launch point sits right there at water level, a small fountain of sparks and smoke below the main burst. Unfortunately the barge drifted with the current, and it ended up quite far down the town, probably away from the main crowds!

The pharmacist in the window is beaming and offering to help. “Pop in, I can help & advise.” I don’t think this man checking his phone is a customer.

The performing leprechauns are back, sitting next to the new raised flower beds that were installed by Cork City Council recently. They love the attention but they are loud.

The stone warehouses along Custom House Quay have sat behind their green doors for as long as I can remember. Behind them the glass offices construction of the Railyard Apartments tower climbs up, with two cranes over the work. Two eras. Old and new.

Three red things line up in this one. First the red arrow, a sticker on one of the big cardboard boxes in the Arnotts window display, pointing across at her. Then a red and white stick taped to the glass at an angle, aimed down at her too. And the red case on her phone,…

The manager had the best spot on the street: feet planted, hand on hip, watching three other men do the actual work. Two were up in a green cherry picker prodding at the glass of the HSBC building, and a third leaned on a rail inside and watched them. That’s two layers of supervision for…

Two anglers cast off the end of Ballycotton pier as the sun set. The harbour crane stood black against the sky, and one man’s rod bent back mid-cast, blurred by the long exposure. The cloud broke into pink and orange over the headland to the west, with the houses along the shore already lit. It…